Flash loaders (the properly done ones)

[therussian]

Im going to do an intro to a html site in flash, but within the site which is all html, i want a cd player, i have music files within a swf which i call but i dont know how to mathmatically load it so it works for both 56k and fast connections like this example: www.mistersmiths.com I made a fake loader with graphics and made it load up but when u want to go back and forward a track it wil lalways go back to the loader. Im more graphically midned than programming, and i dont know action scripts that well. Can u tell me how to do a loader or send me a fla i can use and adapt? Thanks

[Rob]

Hi... just browsing that site and I get a 404 error... site does not exist... www.mistersmiths.com .. R U sure that is the right URL?

[therussian]

Rob it has a dot at the end of .com, get rid of it and your there... www.mistersmiths.com

[kyle]

Yes it does work......
If you are considering a flash loader for your site, any type of music file over 250kb is probably a no-no as people wont wait that long to get the music.
If it is only a small midi file its ok
The music on your exisiting site took a while to load over my dialup site

[therussian]

Yeah they are udner 250kb and its hard to do for both 56k modem dial up and cable. On cable its fine, but i really need to know how to do a loader which recognises the persons modem so it will load differently according to that, like the loader on that site i posted up.

[Rob]

Hi...

I would even go so far as to say that if your site will be very media rich, then I would not even cater for dial up users as they will get so cheesed of waiting for loadings, that they'll go elsewhere anyway.

There are more and more sites now forgeting about dial up users. I'm not saying that that attitude is good... or bad, but just a sign of the times!

[CTifer]

Are you saying you want a different preloader depending on bandwidth? If so, I can't understand why. But anyway, to create a preloader, what I generally do is create a MovieClip that is 100 frames long. That 100 frames spans the length of the animation.

I'll normally put "Loading" or have some sort of bar that fills up and just use a mask to give it the effect that shows how much is loaded.

Then I calculate the total bytes loaded by the total bytes that should be loaded to get a percentage. Then I tell my preloader to go to that frame.

So if I'm 50% done on loading my movie, I go to frame 50 of my loading animation.

You can check out MicClub.net for a simple "LOADING" preloader for each of the different personas. If you click on "MiClub", you'll see another pop-up that uses a different type of preloader, but operates off of the same premise.

Let me know if you run into a particular problem and I'll try to help you.

[Rob]

Very helpful post that CTifer.... not knowing flash personally... I'm glad we have some knowledgeable members on board that do!!

:wink:

[CTifer]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="geneva, verdana, arial" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If you are considering a flash loader for your site, any type of music file over 250kb is probably a no-no as people wont wait that long to get the music<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Not neccessarily. Flash is great in the regards that you can use streaming sounds and it doesn't need to load the entire file to begin playing. By default, Flash's streaming output is set to 16bit though and can sound awful, so when you go under the Publish Options, crank that up to whatever you need it to be.

Plus with the hi-bandwidth users out today, I wouldn't even really blink at a 250kb file. I had some reservations about putting up 400k files, but I still put them up

[Webforumz Staff]

I think you just want a standard preloader don't you? That site doesn't use different files for different bandwidths, it just waits until the file is fully loaded before it plays it. That's really easy to do. I plan to put together a few tutorials and the like for this sort of thing, but for now, I'll just tell you here...

In your first frame of your movie, either in a new scene before your actual content or just before it in the same scene, you need to setup an if statement that checks if the number of bytes loaded is equal to the total number of bytes in the file. If this condition is met then you can use a gotoAndPlay("framenumber");

A few frames after this If statement you want a frame which sends flash back to frame one to make another check. This loop make a check over and over again until the bytes are loaded. Then the gotoAndPlay sends flash past the loop and onto your movie.

Here's a flash file with this setup if it sounds a little confusing:
http://www.digital-end.com/webforumz.../preloader.fla

And a demonstration:
http://www.digital-end.com/webforumz...preloader.html

You can test this in flash by going to control>test movie and view>bandwidth profiler.
If you now select a bandwidth under the debug menu, then you will see the arrow jumping back and forwards until it has simulated loading. This will work for any size of file.

[therussian]

You guys are the DON's!!! I'll try those and see if I'm successful, I'm sure I gcan count on ur GENIUSNESS if i run into problems, thanks guys, this new forum can work really well and be a great resource for web designers, i'm guessing mostly for problem solving and beginners.

Might start a new discussion soon as this list seems to be getting longer but well worht seeing peopels views and comments. I'll try those thigns out soon. at the moment im accessing swf files with the music track i want for my cd player, but are like under 200kb or 100kb for 56k modems or between 300-500kb for faster modems. Crappy way of doing it so i'll try ur ways.

[Rob]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="geneva, verdana, arial" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by therussian

this new forum can work really well and be a great resource for web designers, i'm guessing mostly for problem solving and beginners.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

therussian - Glad you like it!! Tell all your friends about it or we'll have to kill you. ??:

[therussian]

Awww Rob you say the sweetest things!

I've told two people, a graqphic designer and an ASP master.

[Rob]

:wink:

[therussian]

ctifer... I want to try ur loader way... but don;t know where to start, let me say what I think I need to do and please correct me....

1. Cretae amovie clip into the SAME swf file which will be my main intro flash animation...

2. have 100 frames, 1 key frame per frame..?

Questions...

How do i tell flash on this frame be 50%? not understanding the logictics, talk to me like i'm thick and i may understand, and i'd rather be tutored, than look at other peoples sites.

Thanks dude

[Webforumz Staff]

Ok, I would suggest against using this method and instead use the method I described... Mainly because it takes up less file space, is more professional and is infallible. Your proposed method is dependant on a few more things that are fallible, like the user intervening and playing/stopping the movie.

If you REALLY want to follow this method then I can draw up a flash file for you.

[CTifer]

The user stopping the movie has nothing to do with the preloader stopping...

I believe you need to look into getBytesLoaded and getBytesTotal and calcuate a percentage off of that. One you have a nice round number (hint, use parseInt(variable)), tell your preloader (assuming it's named myPreload on the _root):

_root.myPreload.gotoAndStop(yournumber)

If you have a suggestion as to how that can be fouled up, I'd like to hear it, but this is in its simplest form...

[Webforumz Staff]

Sorry, misunderstood you and thought you had it jumping from frame to frame in the main scene. But seeing as all he wants to do is show the percentage loaded and maybe a bar to this effect, there's no need to jump around frames and instead you could just set it through the code.

[Webforumz Staff]

Ok, I've helped therussian over MSN Messenger, these are the files produced:

A demonstration of the loader:
http://www.digital-end.com/webforumz...ntage_bar.html

And the FLA:
http://www.digital-end.com/webforumz...entage_bar.zip

This is a preloader with a loading bar.